Dancing Star
by Seed01
Summary: Followup to Zero Hour. Archer faces his Season 3 demons. UPDATED: final chapters online
1. Chapter 1 of 7

**DANCING STAR, by Seed**

**A Star Trek Enterprise Fanfiction**

SPOILERS: Zero Hour

SUMMARY: Archer faces his Season 3 demons…

DISCLAIMER: Not mine!

RATING: K+

NOTE: This story rewrites the last scene of Season 3 finale, "Zero Hour" and then takes a completely different route from everything in "Storm Front"…

My endless thanks to bluedana, for helping me through this, encouraging me, bearing with my bouts of madness and finally for proofreading the final version of my fiction… Blue, you are my shiny little star!

A/N: This story has originally been posted at the Logical Choice forum and I had decided not to post it anywhere else until I had written an epilogue, which, unfortunately, is still missing. But, as (un)luck would have it, the story got lost because of a server crash and I decided to post it here for anyone still interested. I am sorry to say it seems at the moment extremely unlikely that I will ever get around to writing the epilogue, so be advised...

* * *

**Chapter 1**

**---**

_"I tell you: one must have chaos in one, to give birth to a dancing star." __(Thus Spake Zarathustra)_

_---_

When he first came to, Jonathan Archer was only aware of the pain in his head. He lay still, trying to open his eyes, blinking, and painfully creasing his brow. His whole vision field was composed of a semi-dark vagueness, above him some kind of whitish substance … cloth, maybe?

A moaning made him try to turn his head to his right, but the motion left him dazed, and some moments passed before he was able to make out the image of a man lying on a cot, heavily bandaged, blood and dirt haphazardly marring the not-so-white gauze. He slowly realized that the man's left arm was missing at the elbow.

"_Where…?_" The thought flickered and lasted but a fleeting second. He felt so empty that no mental process had the strength to make way into his mind, and let himself fall back in the void of thoughtlessness.

_He dreamt an azure sky and sunshine. He was lying on his back on an ancient Terran ship's deck and looking at white sails swelling in the wind above him, while the pull made the rigging softly screech._

_---_

A golden-red light was knocking at his eyelids, while raucous wheezing syllables floated around to his ears. He tried to open his eyes again, but the light was painful to bear.

There were voices all around, some merely speaking, others, by the tone, giving orders, some again tinged with urgency, but above all many voices moaning, pleading and wailing. He couldn't understand any of them.

"_The translator…_" he thought, finally succeeding in opening his eyes.

Four men were standing around his bed, staring at him: a doctor in a white coat smeared with blood, a lamp in his hand, and three men in military uniforms which looked as if taken from an old war movie. Two of them were human, but he completely forgot them as soon as the third one stepped into the light.

From the slick white face of a devil from ancient earth legends, his features frozen into a perpetual sneer, the fixed gaze of disquieting red eyes hypnotized him. He felt a cold damp overcoming him, sheer revulsion, like he had never felt before.

"What…" he tried to utter, but his voice failed him.

His head was hurting viciously. The men were speaking again, in the foreign language. The alien creature gave an order, then they all left.

He fell into darkness again.

---

He sat on the floor with his back to the wall, his hands tied on his lap, his chin on his chest, lulled by the van's motion. In the morning he'd been hoisted to the train by a couple of rough soldiers and he'd been alone ever since.

He was almost too weary to wonder, to think, to guess. Nothing did make sense. He was convincing himself he was probably living in his own delirious mind, a prisoner of himself.

Even so though, why he'd chosen this particular setting for this nightmare, he was at a loss to understand.

He was cold and damp, and could hear the soft beating of the rain on the roof. He could also see some of the greyness outside through the narrow horizontal slits on the van's wall. They were travelling through a ghost country, now and then the wreck of a tree in the mud, then fields, more mud, woods, mist. And always rain. Like it was trying to wash the world away.

He tried to move his neck, to melt the painfully dull sensation which had taken residence there. Tried to move his legs, his arms. But the feeling he was looking at something happening to someone else made him disconnected from his own body.

"_Where am I?_" he asked himself. No answer came. "_Who am I?_" This was easier. "_Jonathan Archer, Captain of the Enterprise._" The answer came unbidden, automatically.

But was he, really? If so, then, where was this ship, Enterprise, the thing in the world that made him who he was? The thing that defined him. So much so, that he was to himself, before anything else, Enterprise's captain.

"_You can be a captain to your crew, a captain of your ship, but without these things you are only yourself. No captain. Simply Jonathan Archer_."

The thought upset him. "_Where's my ship?_" Anger and anguish, suddenly coming alight, gave him energy. Struggling with his bound hands, he started searching himself, feeling for the patch on his left shoulder. And there it was, Enterprise's emblem. A sudden rush of relief coursing through him, his head upturned, his eyes closed, his breath slowly exhaling, he silently thanked the stars for the small token of his identity still left to him.

"I am Jonathan Archer, Captain of the Enterprise" he said softly to himself, his hand stroking the roughness of the badge over and over. He repeated the words many times.

---

Three days and two nights he spent in the van, often burning through angry bursts of fever, for the most part shivering under a stinky scratchy blanket, now and then trying to eat something they had thrown in at some stop during the way, a stale piece of bread, or a half-rotten apple.

But he was not alone. A long procession of ghosts was visiting him.

"You said you would come because I needed you!" his words coming out slurred by fever, rage and disappointment "And I did need you. Oh God! I needed you so much! But you were not there. I had to do it all on my own! You know… you know… those things! Sim, the ship, the dead… always alone! Alone!" He screamed the last word, shivering even more violently.

"Friends!" A smirk of rage and an almost-sob erupted from his lips. "Is this your friendship? The only times you were ready were when you had to question and betray me. The insectoid ship … it was easy then, wasn't it? Just jump to the occasion, just show everyone what a fool I am! That was fun, wasn't it?"

A long pause, stressed by his own ragged breath.

"And when I had to steal that warp coil, oh! What a field day, eh? Suddenly your conscience had awakened… You couldn't keep quiet, you couldn't allow such an act, eh? The truth is, you had to make clear to yourself that it was entirely my fault, that it was my decision, and only mine, that you didn't have anything to do with it. And you know what? You were right! You never had anything to do with it. Never. Not once. It was always me. Only me. It's all on me!" His speech ended on a sob, and he kept crying until he was too tired to go on.

He had many guests. Crewman Fuller. Hoshi. Malcolm Reed. Phlox. Sim.

He was never sure whether it was Trip or Sim, at the beginning, and that made it even more awful.

"Trip! Please! You… you must forgive me. You are the only one. You do understand, don't you? It was for them, at home, and for the dead, so many of them. And my crew. It was for you Trip! It was for Elizabeth. You told me you were sorry, you told me I'd done the right thing! Please!" At this point he realized it was Sim in front of him, sneering, saying: "So what? Are you going to take me to sickbay at gunpoint?"

And later. "You wanted to know how many of them were children?… the answer is: almost a million and a half. Maybe I should be happy Dolim slew you… Maybe I would be happy if he had slain me too…" His words resonated in the empty car.

At the end of it all, the Captain of the Illyrian ship from which he'd taken the warp coil would appear. He never said anything. He just stood there in the dark staring at him.

---

When the train lurched and stopped on the track, Jonathan Archer did not think too much of it.

They had stopped many times during the way, sometimes for what seemed like hours to him, even though he had no way of knowing. Some times he heard people shuffling around the vans, now and then a harsh word resonating in the mist. Other times he didn't hear a thing. If he peeped outside to try and understand where they were, he usually saw nothing but mist, or darkness, depending on the hour. Once he'd seen what looked like the outskirts of a town, gritty roads and deserted edifices grimly looking at him. No-one was ever around.

He was beginning to feel like a ghost himself.

This time though, some minutes after the train had stopped, the door was shoved open, and the, by now, almost familiar soldier spat something at him. Archer tried to push himself up, but was stopped by a sudden spinning of the world around him. The short tempered soldier didn't bother to wait, and brusquely pulled him up by his arm and threw him out of the van. Archer fell gracelessly on his right shoulder and groaned in pain, but the guards (there always were two of them) pulled him to his feet and, grabbing him under his arms, started half-pushing and half-carrying him along the track.

It was dark, he was dizzy, and apart from some fleeting impressions of darkened alleys, whooshing black trees and chilly fog, he didn't remember much else.

But, in the end, it seemed he had only bargained one cell for another, as he found himself steadily gazing at a mouldy grey wall in a barren room.


	2. Chapter 2 of 7

**Chapter 2**

T'Pol was heading towards the sickbay along the E-deck corridor, her mind still examining the unexpected news her two officers had come back with from their brief earthbound mission.

Those, together with the transmissions Ensign Sato had picked from the surface, would indeed indicate that Enterprise had leaped back in time, to 1945.

No alternate explanation was forthcoming, but, even though her skepticism about the possibility of time travel had been tempered lately, she was still hesitant to assume that was what had actually happened. The idea needed careful consideration.

T'Pol was beginning to work on the chances and eventual possible causes of such an occurrence, when her eyes suddenly registered a change in the light's texture surrounding her, and she raised them to find herself floating among colourful interweaving fluxes of light.

In front of her stood the individual she knew as Daniels.

Her first, quickly suppressed reaction to seeing him was one of irritation. He always seemed to materialize out of thin air to disrupt their missions, relating to Captain Archer unlikely theories about time travel and getting them all involved in illogical schemes they knew nothing about.

She would have preferred to negate all the evidence she'd been presented with during the years that this man was indeed a time-traveller, and be able to remain within the safe borders of what the Vulcan Science Directorate deemed acceptable. But, right now, the man's presence was not totally unwelcome, as he probably was the only person in the entire universe who could somewhat explain their present circumstances.

In truth, he was probably the person responsible for their present circumstances.

"Mr. Daniels," she uttered clearly, clasping her hands behind her back, raising an eyebrow, and waited.

"Sub-Commander! I'm here to ask something of you, something crucial to our future. I implore you to try and keep an open mind!" Daniels' voice vibrated with contained emotion, as his eyes met hers with the directness of a man who has nothing left to lose.

She met his gaze with her own, letting herself express a small amount of all the conflicting emotions she was no longer totally able to control:

"You presume a lot coming to me! I don't know what you did, but I'm inclined to think it is your fault we find ourselves in this incomprehensible situation." She made a vague gesture with her right hand. "I thought, all the crew of this ship thought, we would finally be able to go back and rest," her lips imperceptibly twitched, "and we find ourselves in what appears to be another time!" Her voice raised as much as a Vulcan voice can be allowed to.

"I understand!" he said loudly, then hung his head in his hand. "I do!" he repeated almost in a whisper. "But this is all I could do… Things went terribly wrong! This was the only course to try and save what can be saved…." His voice died away.

"It seems, Mr. Daniels, that you once again intervened in our timeline. I was under the impression you told Captain Archer" -- her speech faltered for the shortest time here, and she blinked -- "your duty was to preserve the timeline, not alter it!" Disapproval echoed in her voice.

"That's why I brought you here, T'Pol" he said, his right hand pointing at the delicate colourful lines surrounding them. "It is not so simple."

He paused, rubbing his forehead with two fingers, his brow creased. "Let me show you…," he said, following a thread with his right index. The line was bright white. "You see, not all timelines have the same time signature. There are points in time that hold a special energy, that…," he paused again, searching for a word, finally finding it, "… _resonate_ through time."

"You see this bright white light? This is a strong resonating moment, a moment which will deeply affect the future." He paused again, contemplating the luminous thread, its light fading and mingling with blue, purple and orange, as the timeline expanded. "I tried to make Jonathan understand, but he wouldn't listen. He thought it wouldn't matter if he sacrificed himself. He didn't see that he had to be here!"

He sighed, rubbing his brow again. "You see, the Xindi attack should not have happened, in fact it DIDN'T happen before, but then the timeline was altered. We could not prevent it. I am here now, it is possible for me to speak to you, because the time ripple hasn't fully reached us yet. When it does, the "other" past will be gone, forever. But the fact is, you should not have gone into the Expanse!" He bit his lip, his water-clear eyes searching hers. "You, all of you, made different choices. Jonathan, you, Tucker, all the crew. Yes, Earth is still there, but the price we will have to pay is unforeseeable." He paused again, sighing, his gaze lost.

"Mr. Daniels, while I find all this… fascinating, it is not clear to me what you expect of me, of us. I, the crew, all of us … are very tired." An un-Vulcan-like sigh escaped her lips and her head slightly bowed. "Maybe you do not understand, but it is very possible we could not help you, even if we wanted to. If the captain were here…"

Daniels interrupted her, urgency in his voice. "That's the crux of the problem, T'Pol! He is here! I thought if I could save his life, it would be enough, but the timeline is deteriorating! Look!" He was now pointing to another thread, glowingly bright in the beginning, but then starting to dissipate, as if the filaments composing it were untwisting and at the same time turning to dull blue and grey with some orange speckle.

"Here," he said, pointing to the white beginning of the thread. "It's the beginning of Enterprise's mission, before the timeline was altered. It should continue this way. It did. One of those momentous times in history when the life of a few absorbs and then reflects back the changes happening in the human spirit. But now, after the Expanse…" He was following with his hand the decaying tendril.

"What do you mean…" T'Pol swallowed, her eyes suspiciously glassy. "What do you mean, 'the captain is here?'"

"Yes, I couldn't allow him to die. I pulled him out, while the weapon was already exploding, but the shockwave… I couldn't control it! I pulled him into the time continuum, but then I lost him. I don't know how it happened, but he is here. Well, to be more precise, he is now." An unwilling smile twisted his lips. "That's why I sent you here too, the Enterprise, I mean, to get him back. It all depends on this."

He hung his head, looking thoughtfully at his feet. "You know, when you travel through time, and with this equipment," he made a circular motion, "you see people in a different way. I always loved to watch Jon, before all this began. He had a quality about him, a halo, this same light," his hand was caressing the white thread. "_A man who can summon the future_" he said, half-heartedly smiling to a private joke. "But then, it started to change. Not when I pulled him out and lost him, it was before. His light began to dim, and turn to purple. Now, I don't know…" He shook his head in distress "I don't know if he will be able to accomplish his fate, or will be lost, and our future with him." He sighed deeply. "Please, you have to find him! You have to find him and take him back!"

---

"And Daniels told ya he still alive?" Tucker asked, his voice dangerously high, his arms tracing meaningless patterns on the air around him.

This was difficult. Jon had been lost to him many times already during this damn mission. He remembered the time he had to fire on him on the insectoid ship. He remembered when the captain had flown that suicide mission to Azati Prime. He remembered their last goodbye, before he left to try and destroy the damn weapon. Jonathan had been cracking a joke, and, already inside the airlock, turned to smile a last time at him and T'Pol standing in the corridor.

It hurt to remember that smile.

"You believe 'im?"

T'Pol stood in front of the porthole, her spine ramrod straight, her hands as usual clasped behind her back. It felt strange to be talking to her in Jonathan's Ready Room, before 'his porthole', between his books and under the gaze of the old Enterprises looking on from the bulkhead. It felt wrong.

"Do I believe him? There is no logical answer to that question. I have no way of knowing if he is right or wrong, but, as you humans would put it, we have nothing to lose."

Tucker sighed, his left hand on his hip, the other raking his hair. Nothing to lose. The problem was, he didn't know if he had it in him to believe Jonathan was alive. It seemed an act of faith beyond his power. He was too tired.

"This's crazy, I don' know… I think I'm too weary to think…" He felt T'Pol's hand on his shoulder, a strong warm grip.

"This is the captain. We must do all that is in our power," she said, looking him in the eye, then added, uncharacteristically softly, "Trip, he is your friend."

"Oh God!" groaned the engineer. "You think I don' know that? Look, all I'm sayin' is …what if it's not true? What if we don't find 'im? Then what?"

Would there ever be an end to all this? A time when they would be allowed to rest, when they wouldn't have to search inside themselves for yet another sparkle of energy, when they wouldn't have another mission to accomplish?

"Would you prefer not to try? And live with the doubt?"

"No!" he said aloud. If he didn't know anything else, he knew this was one doubt he could not live with. Slowly, deliberately, he repeated, "No! I know it's the only thing to do…." He sighed again, deeply, gazing at the floor.

T'Pol's hand was still on his shoulder. To give him strength, support. But, maybe, to ask for it too, though she didn't know it herself.

"_Time to throw your heart beyond the obstacle, Trip!"_ He smiled at T'Pol. "An' after all, it's not like we have much choice, we're kind of stuck here!" he cracked, offering her one of his best grins.

"Precisely," answered T'Pol blinking. She took her hand away from his shoulder. "Now, about those schematics I talked with Daniels about…"

---

"So, this is the situation," concluded T'Pol. She looked around the central desk to find four pairs of equally doubtful eyes staring at her. "I know it is disconcerting, but I can assure you that, after some thinking and a calm analysis of the situation, you will find it less disturbing."

A shell-shocked silence fell on the command centre, while everyone struggled to take in all that had been said in the few minutes since the briefing had begun.

Hoshi felt slightly queasy. The neuro-parasites had left her weak, with frequent headaches accompanied by waves of nausea.

The last day, with the captain relentlessly spurring her almost beyond her limits, had been hard, but she remembered it the same way you remember a fevered nightmare when the fever subsides and your mind is clear again. Those hours on Degra's ship, Archer's eyes, his voice, his grip on her shoulders, his touch on her arm, prodding and cajoling till she gave him what he wanted, felt like something that happened to another person.

What had been haunting her since the moment they left the captain on the Xindi weapon was something else: the last words Jonathan Archer had told her, an encouraging expression on his face. "_Don't worry, I'll be right behind you._"

She had repeated those words like a mantra, over and over, needing something to hold on to, to keep her going while they walked along the corridors of the Xindi weapon, while they waited to be beamed away, back on Degra's ship, all the way to the sickbay.

"_Don't worry, I'll be right behind you._"

She had repeated them lying on that unfamiliar bunk, like she used to repeat her mother's reassuring words as a child, when she huddled in her bed afraid of the darkness. Until Malcolm had come to the little half-lit room and told her that the captain hadn't made it. But it was too late by then, the mantra had already taken possession of her inner space and the words kept echoing endlessly in her mind even after she discovered them to be a painful, stupid lie.

And now T'Pol came out and said that maybe the captain was still alive.

"Ma'am, do you believe him?" Travis finally ventured to ask, breaking a silence as heavy as lead, his wide black eyes gazing at T'Pol in wonder.

T'Pol looked as Vulcan as possible, her face perfectly expressionless, her hands folded on the table, a logical answer to everything. "As I said already, I would not have presented you with the situation if I did not believe there was a probability of it being accurate. Now it is up to us to find out how accurate," she stated calmly.

Hoshi looked around the table. Travis was still staring at T'Pol like she held some sacred knowledge. Malcolm was stubbornly looking at his own hands, refusing to meet anyone's eyes. She knew he was angry. He had been ever since the captain had given him the order to leave him on the weapon. He was probably angry at himself for obeying that order, too.

"Well, well, my friends! Why are you taking this so bad? It's wonderful news!" Phlox's chipper voice penetrated her thoughts. "I know you were just beginning to accept the captain's loss, and this must be somewhat… ehrr… difficult! But, come on! There's the possibility the captain is still alive. Let's do whatever we can to find out if it's true!" He ended on a positive note, his usual overlapping smile swallowing his entire face.

A timid answering smile began to form on Travis' face, and his eyes started dancing around, looking for other hopeful eyes to meet. Reed wouldn't bulge, and kept staring at his own hands, without ever raising his head. Phlox answered Travis with his Cheshire grin and Trip with an honest-to-God Trip smile.

"We find the captn' an' we go home!" nodded Trip. Good, old Trip.

She wished she could meet Travis' eyes and smile too, she wished there wasn't a voice in her head torturing her with that stupid phrase.

"_Don't worry, I'll be right behind you._"

"And how exactly do you propose we do that?" asked Malcolm in an almost resentful tone, finally raising his head and glaring at Tucker in defiance.

"_You can always trust Malcolm to point out the bright side of things,_" she thought.

But, after all, they had not been with them when the captain decided he should play the hero yet another time, leaving them to carry the burden of guilt and what-ifs.

"_Don't worry, I'll be right behind you._"

"That's a good question, Mr. Reed, and one I asked Daniels myself," T'Pol answered evenly, carefully ignoring Reed's attitude. "Unfortunately, he cannot help us directly, but we discussed together the possibility of realizing a device to detect time discrepancy. The underlying theory is similar to the one behind quantum dating, and, with Commander Tucker's help, I feel confident we can assemble one. We will have to link it to the sensor array, so we'll be able to sweep the surface. We will need your help, Ensign Sato."

T'Pol was looking at her, waiting for an answer. She expected all of them to just jump aboard, like nothing had happened, and perform their duty.

Hoshi simply nodded, looking T'Pol in the eye: "I'll do my best." Her voice sounded strange to her own ears, someone else's. "_That's all I can give you,_" she thought.

"Mr. Reed, I would be grateful if you could work on some tactical scenarios in the meanwhile, in the eventuality we find out where the captain is?"

"Yes, Ma'am." Malcolm's tone was even more clipped than usual, his posture more rigid, his face a mask. Hoshi knew he would do much more than his best. He would work with ferocious determination, throwing his frozen passion at the bloody scenarios.

"That's all. Commander, Ensign, you're with me."

"Yes, let's get to it!" The grin on Trip's face was full of hope.

Hoshi was too tired for hope. She only wished the voice in her head would stop repeating again and again the same phrase.

"_Don't worry, I'll be right behind you._"


	3. Chapter 3 of 7

**Chapter 3**

**---**

_"For I am every dead thing,_

_... and I am re-begot_

_Of absence, darknesse, death; things which are not." __(J. Donne)_

_---_

A milky light was filtering through the room's only window, a narrow opening situated just under the ceiling. Too high for Archer to try and peep out. He could probably have tried to pull himself up, holding to the iron bars, but he really didn't feel up to any physical activity. His limbs felt numb and weak, his head ached, the left side of his face throbbed and unexpected waves of nausea and dizziness suddenly overcame him.

The place was eerily silent.

He had spent a good night, waking up only a couple of times shivering and huddling into the (new) scratching blanket, the solid ground a welcome change to the perpetually lurching van floor. He listlessly swallowed the colourless and tasteless mush a guard had left and drank iron-tasting water from a jug on the floor. Then he put some of the water on his throbbing face and forehead.

There wasn't much left he could do, so he just sat on the floor, his back to the wall, looking at the narrow patch of cloudy sky you could see beyond the window.

---

Around midday, two soldiers entered the cell and carelessly went through the shove-him-up and pull-him-along routine.

They walked what looked like endless corridors, that became less barren as they went, until they stopped in front of a dark wooden door. One of the guards knocked on the door, and, at the brusque answer on the other end, entered the room. A few curt syllables were carried through the open door, but Archer couldn't see who was inside. His curiosity, however, was soon to be satisfied, as the first guard re-emerged and he was pushed into the room. The door closed behind his back, leaving him alone with the room's occupant.

Archer stood transfixed.

Before him was the creature he'd seen in the hospital tent and afterwards deemed a figment of his delirious imagination, the pale-skinned demon in a Nazi uniform.

As a starship captain, he had met alien species, some of them odd-looking, or even awe-inspiring, or downright unpleasant, but never before had he experienced the sheer revulsion and damp fear this unknown entity elicited in his soul.

The creature was sitting at his desk, in a sun-lit room brightened by a rusty-yellow Persian carpet and the green of a vibrant plant, perusing a paper and smoking, the everyday ease with which he performed these human acts making his out-worldly appearance even eerier.

He raised his fearful red eyes to Archer's face and a chilling smile curved his lips.

"An unexpected gift!" said the creature in a soft, cultured voice, in which resonated slight echoes of a foreign inflection.

"Wh…" Archer tried to croak out through the lump in his throat, but his long unused voice failed him.

The creature kept his smiling countenance on him, showing the same indulgence an adult would use to a child.

Archer straightened his spine and clenched his jaw, gratingly uttering: "Who are you?"

The creature graciously inclined his white skull, regarding him through narrowed eyes: "I do not have a name."

"You don't have a name?" repeated Archer hollowly, a blank stare in his eyes.

"No, I don't. I do not need one. But that is hardly the matter. I am very pleased to meet you, Jonathan Archer." His smile intensified, glowing in his red eyes. "Very pleased, indeed."

"You know my name?" reeled Archer.

"Oh yes!" he carelessly shrugged. "Your name and much more. I'm pleased you found your way to me. This is exactly where you should be, even though, as I said, it is an unexpected pleasure." He smiled again.

Jonathan Archer felt like a clueless, defenceless child. That creature, whatever it was, had obviously the upper hand on him, and was playing it so cool that each one of his repartees succeeded in leaving him even more disoriented.

He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply, clenching his fists at his sides. He decided he would wait and see what his opponent's next move would be.

"This is not a game of chess, Jonathan. And there's no need to feel so… unsettled." The smile on his lips briefly tinged his voice with amusement, before disappearing into inscrutable blankness. "It is you, who have chosen to come to me. To come here." His hands indicated the room.

"I? I don't even know where I am, I certainly didn't decide anything!" Frustration and fear sparkled his anger.

"Do not try to delude yourself, Jonathan. This is what you chose. Answer truthfully to this question and you will know it." The creature paused a beat, to deliver the final blow with unruffled calm: "Is it not true that death is what you chose?"

---

Jonathan's mind was suddenly flooded with another here and now.

He was back in the Xindi weapon, telling Malcolm to go, and saw again the look in his officer's eyes.

He was viciously struggling with the reptilian commander, raising every ounce of rage and hate and hurling it at his enemy.

He experienced icy cold satisfaction when he pushed the button on the detonator, and felt the warm splash of Dolim's blood on his face.

He finally felt the rush of the run mingle with the certainty that it was too late, and his mind's desperate dive into darkness.

His last thought, the fire and blinding light engulfing him already, was a desperate plea to blackness to embrace him and let him sleep forever.

---

"Yes, Jonathan, exactly so!" nodded the fiend behind the desk, his elbows on his chair's armrests and his hands loosely folded together.

"Please, sit down now," he invited with a hand.

Jonathan dropped himself on a chair; he felt his legs couldn't carry him any longer.

"You see, this is a special time we are living," continued the creature looking through the window. "This war is almost over. It was a terrible, bloody war. For years people kept dying, and dying: under the bombs, because of the enemy fire, in the concentration camps, killed by political enemies, killed by their own countrymen, even died from starvation, or frozen to death on the Russian planes. And here, air is so poisonous with death that men do not know how to live any longer." His eyes met Jon's. "We are in the Reich's heart. Our beloved Führer is sending the last of his men to their death, and then he will send the children, and last he will follow. And we go after him, like the rats followed the Pied Piper of Hamelin, because we are drunk with death." He paused, his eyes lost in a vision only he could see.

"_In reality, we are not marching forward, we are reeling, staggering. Our beloved Führer is dragging us towards the shades of darkness and everlasting nothingness,_" he uttered slowly, like someone who recites a poem by heart. "And I walk among them like a prince," his red eyes flickered. "They shudder and turn their eyes away when I walk among them, because I give them what they fear most and yet secretly crave: nothingness and blackness." The words resonated in the silence of the room.

The creature's stare unfalteringly found and held Jonathan's eyes. "Your heart's inner desire has been fulfilled , Jonathan." His name sounded like a caress on his lips, and Archer tasted the sickening sweetness of blood at the back of his throat. "And you are meeting it!"

---

Jonathan Archer was listening in appalled silence.

The monster's speech was so evidently crazy, and at the same time chillingly familiar.

Yes, how many times he had wished to be delivered from the too heavy weight he had to carry. Walking along the darkened corridors of his broken ship, counting the bodies of his crewmen to be consigned to space, sitting in the blackness of his cabin and thinking about those he had wronged or killed, looking in the mirror and seeing a hateful face gazing back at him, he had wished he could pay for his sins. Every minute of the past months, without even being conscious of it, he had fed a darkness in his soul and chanted a soundless plea for nothingness and blackness and death.

As the realization hit him, he felt a long shiver pass through every fibre of his being, a heavy weariness enveloped his soul, and every thought fled from his mind, leaving behind dumb emptiness.


	4. Chapter 4 of 7

**Chapter 4**

**---**

"_The stars of thine own fate lie in thy breast." __(F. Schiller)_

_---_

When he woke in his cell the following morning, his memories of the day before were blurry.

The last thing he remembered was the edge of the wooden desk his eyes had focused on the night before at the end of that conversation. After that, he couldn't remember getting back to the cell, or falling asleep, or even a single thought.

He felt numb.

The day dragged on, bringing nothing but silence and, once, the guard with food and water.

Bits and pieces of his conversation with the creature kept coming back to him: words, phrases, the way his voice drawled out on a particular sound. And then the fearsome moment in which he'd had to look into the black unknown abyss of his thoughts.

He began pacing, shaking his head, clenching and unclenching his hands in distress. He could not face him again. Whatever happened, he could not let them drag him again to that room, to meet that creature who fed on his own decaying thoughts. He was desperate to get away. He anxiously listened for every sound, at the same time thrilled someone would come and he could have the possibility to escape and terrified at the thought that they could come to take him to _it_.

But no-one came, he heard no sound, and at the falling of darkness he lay down in his scratchy blanket again and fell asleep.

---

_He could hear the sound of the waves breaking on the shore. The moon was thin, the night warm and hushed and he was the only one on the beach. _

_A voice called to him, softly:_

"_Captain!"_

_He turned. On the sand stood a girl, the moonlight paling her forehead and right cheek. She smiled._

"_Captain," repeated, her voice a caress._

_Her long dark hair was pulled back in a loose ponytail, and she was wearing a Starfleet jumpsuit. Looking him in the eyes, she raised her right hand, her index finger pointing at the sky, and said:_

"_The stars! You must look at the stars."_

_She nodded, and then raised her eyes to the sky. Jonathan followed her gaze and turned his head upward, losing himself in the wonder of the starry sky._

---

The dream was still with him when Archer awoke in his cell.

The first light of dawn was beginning to show through the window. He felt refreshed and much stronger than the days before. He knew in a little while the guard would pass and leave him food and water. He also knew that was the only opportunity he had to escape.

He never heard a sound or sign of another's presence, aside from the guards' and he wondered if he was the only prisoner. Security was low. After all, they knew they were fighting a war they'd already lost, they were dead men walking. He doubted they really cared what happened anymore.

He waited beside the door, the tin jug in his hands. He listened anxiously for every approaching sound, his breath short, his shaking hands tightening spasmodically around the metal object.

He feared that, for some unforeseen reason, the guard would not come. Then he wondered what he would do if the two usual escorts appeared to bring him away.

He waited and trembled until he finally heard the approaching sound of boots on the floor and crouched.

The man stopped on the other side of the door, shuffling with the keys, mumbling something under his breath. Archer tensed. He heard the clinking of the key turning in the lock, then the door screeched open.

The man's hands appeared, carrying a bowl and a jar, then his head came into view and Archer smashed the jug on him with all the strength he could muster. The bowl and jar fell clattering to the floor as the man reeled. Archer didn't give him the time to regain his bearing, flung himself at him, his hands tightening around his neck. They fell to the floor, struggling for mere seconds, before Archer felt the man's body go limp under him.

---

He flew through deserted corridors without ever meeting anyone. This place was really a ghost prison. He ran as fast as his legs could carry him, and, without knowing how, found a door and an exit, and was breathing in the fresh air, looking at the open sky and again running away, without ever stopping to think.

He saw trees, firs, an entire wood, and hastily ran for cover, but it seemed no-one was following him.

He kept pushing himself as hard as he could, but he was weak, and soon had to let himself fall to the needle-covered ground. His nose and throat and lungs hurt, and he let himself recover, trying to breathe evenly.

"_This was maybe the easiest escape ever,_" he thought giddily, inhaling the fresh resiny smell welcoming him to freedom. He felt light-headed and careless, happy to just be out of that dreary tomb he'd been living in the last few days, away from that appalling white-skinned creature.

When his breathing had returned to an even rate, he got up and started hiking.

---

As the day advanced, walking became increasingly difficult. Even though he tried to push ahead, the need to rest forced him to stop more and more often, and the breaks became longer than the walking spells. His initial good mood had also dimmed. The happiness to be free again had turned to dejection, once he realized he didn't know what to do with himself. He was walking on a world which wasn't his, a universe centuries away from any man or place he'd ever known, and he had no idea how he'd gotten here and no way of going back.

He'd been in difficult situations before, on alien worlds or even in another time. But he had always known he had his ship to go back to, his officers looking for him. Now, Enterprise seemed lost forever, and his crew probably thought he was dead. He felt lost.

Firs had given way to beeches, and each step he took was a whisper among the rustling dry leaves on the ground. He had found some water to drink along the way. The weather was still cold, but the tree branches showed the first signs of budding leaves. Soon, night would fall.

Jonathan Archer dropped to the ground. He just lay there, closing his eyes, probing with his mind the various aches in his body and savouring an overwhelming wave of weariness. He had no strength to go on, but, more than that, he had nowhere to go.

He raked the dry leaves around with his hands, making a pile, and then snuggled inside. He looked at the sky above, quickly turning from pink to indigo, and watched the stars coming alight. First Venus, then, one at a time, an innumerable army. He studied Orion, glittering in the early spring time. He reviewed the constellations one by one, softly uttering their names, tasting them on his lips.

He thought of his dream from the previous night. He closed his eyes and saw himself having dinner in his private mess with Trip and T'Pol, talking, joking, smiling, like they used to before the Expanse. He wished he could reach out to them, talk to them, open his heart and explain his reasons, ask them theirs. Too many things had been left unsaid. And now, there wasn't a way to go back, time had run out.

The stars above were the only friends he had left, the only constant, with their hopeful twinkling, and they were light years away. He wished he could reach them, like he'd dreamt of as a stargazing child. But this dream had already come true and had brought so many things he hadn't expected. He'd discovered space was more barren, dangerous and unkind than he thought. He'd discovered that dreams sometimes turn to nightmares.

He was sick and tired of feeling sorry for himself, but it seemed it was the only thing he was left with. He looked at the stars again. He let them into his eyes, feeling their light seep into his soul and melt, their likeness finding a hollow place to match in his breast. "_This would be a good way to go,_" he thought, as sleep clouded his mind. "_Stars always show you the way_".

---

"Captain!" an urgent voice called out. Someone was shaking him. "Captain!"

He opened his eyes, blinking. It was T'Pol's voice, and T'Pol's form was looming above him against the dark night sky.

"T'Pol?"

"Captain, are you alright?"

He pushed himself to a sitting position and looked at her like she was a ghost, the warm touch of her hand on his arm only marginally reassuring. Then he understood.

"You're not real, are you?"

"Captain, we need to get away as fast as possible…"

"It's good you're here. I wished to speak to you."

"Captain, are you feeling alright? We must go now!" She was trying to pull him to his feet.

"Wait! I told you! I need to speak to you. It's important."

She squatted in front of him, studying his face in the darkness, her hand still on his left shoulder. He went on:

"T'Pol, I need…" Now that he had succeeded in getting her attention, words failed him. "T'Pol, I don't… I don't hate you," he finally whispered, the words unlocking a flow: "I thought I did. I felt like I hated everyone, but, now, I understand… I hated you because I hated myself. I couldn't forgive myself and so I couldn't forgive you." He was becoming more agitated while he spoke. "I just thought you should have found a way to help me, should have found the right thing to do or say to save me from what I had to do. But it's unfair! No-one of you could. I couldn't expect this of you, I'm sorry!"

She was looking at him with inscrutable dark eyes, her face almost completely shadowed in the night. "Captain, now you listen to me! You cannot stay here. We have to get away, now! Come on!" She was shoving him upward. He got to his feet, swaying, dropping dead leaves around.

"We have to go? Where?"

"We have to get back to the Enterprise, Captain!" She was trying to pull him ahead.

"But there is no Enterprise!"

She grabbed him by his shoulders, shaking him, looking him in the eye:

"Captain! We have to get back! You have to get back to the Enterprise! Do you understand me?" Her voice was raising, now. He remembered the time when she had pled with him not to go to Azati Prime, with the same high-pitched emotional voice.

"Why are you so emotional, T'Pol? What is, is. Remember? We cannot go back."

"Yes, we can! You have to get back! Captain!"

He tried to listen, to focus, he felt it was important, but his mind was shutting down. He only felt her hands and heard her voice, but from a great distance, getting less and less clear, until it was only a whisper in his ear.


	5. Chapter 5 of 7

**Chapter 5**

Malcolm Reed was trudging in the mud, spouting white clouds of mist into the cold night air.

His nose and mouth burnt, and his body heat was making him sweat profusely inside the heavy winter uniform, while the drizzling rain slowly soaked it. The heavy body he was carrying on his shoulders made taking each step more difficult, but he hung onto it with the blind determination a drowning man would cling to a lifeline with.

His mind was still full of the terrible scenes he'd left behind at the German field hospital in the flood of casualties coming in from the combat zone. The place had been nightmarish: limbless bloodied men wailing and screaming, carried in by their fellow soldiers, the doctors and nurses madly trying to direct the tide, working feverishly on the nearest body. Blood and dirt were everywhere.

No-one had paid any attention to him and Ryan stealing away one of those nameless wounded.

He could hear Corporal Ryan shuffling behind him, his boots slogging in the sticky mud. The MACO had offered to relieve him and carry the unconscious body for a while, but he refused with a curt "no", focusing on the task of getting one foot after another. He would carry the dead weight to the shuttlepod, even at the cost of his last living breath. He had promised it to himself. And he was not a man to go back on his bloody word.

"_Everything went according to plan_." He should be satisfied. His extraction strategy had been well-organized and punctual. As soon as T'Pol had called him to the Ready Room and communicated they thought they had located the captain, he had thrown himself into analyzing every possible detail. And the ease of the real task almost frustrated him. He would have liked a good fight to release some of the anger he'd kept inside for the last two days.

But all he'd got was a sweaty plodding in the mud, struggling with his own limbs to carry the dead weight of Captain Archer's unconscious body.

---

"We've got him, Ma'am! We'll be at the shuttle in five minutes! Reed out."

T'Pol tapped the comm console and turned to Travis.

"Did you hear that? Ready to take off as soon as they get here."

While the young ensign performed pre-flight checks, her mind was busy archiving the news. It seemed everything had gone according to plan.

She felt some kind of emotion insinuating her hard-won control. She tried to analyze it, as she often did with the feelings she now experienced, only to discover they were much more complex and perplexing than she expected. Her clear-cut, logical mind seemed unequipped to deal with them.

She inhaled twice in rapid succession, detaching herself. Then she turned her mind's logical eye to the painfully tight sensation enveloping her inner being. She knew humans would call relief the feeling they'd experience in the present circumstances. But the human definition of the emotion was somewhat perplexing: it implied that relief was a pleasant emotion, and what she was feeling resembled more grief than pleasure.

She let a small sigh escape her lips. Almost never, in her growing experience, a feeling had turned out to be what it was supposed to by human standards. The contradictory human label of "relief" must be accepted for now. There wasn't time for a deeper analysis of the matter.

She filed her doubt away for a later examination and turned her attention back to the situation at hand.

She went to the open hatch, peeping outside in the drizzling blackness.

"Did you see anything?" she asked Corporal Romero, who'd been mounting guard outside. He shook his head and was going to answer, when they heard a shuffling sound from the wood.

The MACO readily pointed his weapon, but the voice of Malcolm Reed reassured them:

"It's us," he wheezed out, scuffing, carrying a limp body on his shoulders. "Help me!"

Romero ran to relieve the officer of the captain's body and swiftly carried it to the shuttle.

As soon as everyone was on board, the shuttle took off.

"How's the captain's condition?" asked T'Pol, securing the captain's unconscious form to the gurney and trying to determine his state.

Reed managed a windy answer: "Unsure. He is unconscious and has an apparent head wound. Apart from that, I couldn't say." He was shuffling around to find a medical scanner.

T'Pol examined the large burn on the side of Archer's face and the white bandage they'd applied around his head, a new wave of emotion engulfing her.

"Captain!" she called in an urgent voice, gently shaking his shoulder. His uniform felt damp under her hand. "Captain!"

"I don't think he can hear you, Ma'am," said Reed stoically, reading the findings on his scanner screen. "Skull fracture and brain edema. Better comm Doctor Phlox and ask him to meet us in the shuttlebay."

---

"Oh, he's going to be alright!" proclaimed Doctor Phlox with his usual cheerfulness, just a touch of weariness in his voice. He emerged from the sickbay's restricted area, taking off the gloves he'd used for the procedure.

"I was able to relieve the pressure on the brain, and he should regain consciousness within the next 24 hours. All we can do now, is wait," he told Commanders T'Pol and Tucker who had been waiting for news in the general area. "You'll be able to see him in a little while, should you wish it."

He left to go back to his patient, leaving the impression of his overextended smile hanging before their eyes.

Trip sighed, scrunching the side of his face: "Well!" he said, dropping his tall form to a chair. "We did it again! The Captn' owes us big time!"

He didn't know if he felt like laughing or like crying. He settled for a grin, thinking of the way he would rib Jon, just like old times. The wave of relief washing over him at the thought left him suddenly spent, and he hunched on the chair.

T'Pol had not stirred, her usual Vulcan poise firmly in place, her spine ramrod straight, her hands clasped behind her back. "I think this is an appropriate time to rest, Commander. I suggest we retire to our quarters, we will be able to visit the captain at a later time. Hopefully, he will be conscious by then."

Looking at T'Pol standing in front of him as cold as a cucumber, the embodiment of the quintessential Vulcan façade, Trip Tucker was submerged by an unexpected gush of laughter

"Ya know, T'Pol, ya just sound soo logical," he giggled, "sooo damn logical!" his form spasmodically but quite soundlessly shaking on the chair.

T'Pol merely raised her brow, dryly thinking that, even with her new understanding of emotions, human reactions were still highly illogical and vastly incomprehensible.

---

_The boy couldn't hold his liquor_. Reed scoffed, looking at the plastered young man on the other side of the table, his eyes glazed and his head starting to loll around. He was a little high himself, but nothing compared to Travis.

Well, it probably wasn't very fair, considering, the way he had unobtrusively poured whiskey after whiskey after Andorian ale in the young ensign's glass, but, hey! _Everything is fair in love and war_… Even though…, technically, they weren't exactly in war any longer, …or were they? And as for love, well…. His thoughts began to jumble.

He hunched on his chair in the deserted half-lit crew mess. No-one was around any longer, but the gathering had been lively a couple of hours before. Travis and himself had meant to drink to the completion of the mission, to the captain's health and to a safe return, but he had to admit it… whiskey and the lazuline liquid didn't mix well… He didn't want to think how Travis would feel in the morning, or, maybe, …he wanted to!

He scoffed again, his shoulders shaken by a low amused laugh. To hell with propriety! He thought of his straight-laced father and laughed in his face, then daringly mumbled an obscenity to the address of Captain Jonathan Archer, just for the fun of it and to vent some of his pent-up frustration. How would he have a kick out of it now, if he could just detonate a couple of those little, flirty, photonic torpedoes!…

"Easy, Reed, or you'll find yourself at the wrong end of a firing squadron…." He laughed himself into stitches, falling from his chair and onto the deck floor.

"Travis!" he bellowed. "Travis, help me up!" He couldn't stop laughing.

Travis tried to get up, swayed on his feet, mumbled something under his breath, and gracelessly sank to the floor. He then began to produce indistinct grieving sounds.

Reed laughed harder, rolling on the floor, crying until he was reduced to an incoherent heap. His stomach hurt, and his head was also beginning to bother him. Bloody hell! What a mess… no-one around to help them to their quarters… this move had not been very… tactical! Malcolm Reed started laughing again.

A little more and he would laugh himself into oblivion.

---

T'Pol stopped just inside the curtain, letting it fall behind her.

The captain appeared to be sleeping. He lay on his back, his arms along his body, the white sheet neatly folded under them, his chest rising and falling at regular intervals. His expression was totally relaxed, like a white canvas waiting for the painter.

T'Pol stood motionless, her attention fully focused on the sound and motion of the man's breathing. The scene was, for some reason, uncommonly peaceful.

"_Disturbingly peaceful_."

She would never have used those two words together six months ago, at a time when she was still in total command of her emotions. But now her perception of herself had permanently changed. She felt, to use Commander Tucker's irritating words, "like an old oil painting". Somewhat cracked. And the same things that used to run off her like water infiltrated the cracks, and touched the marrow.

Now was one of those times when apparently meaningless things, for no justifiable reason, left her open to emotional disturbance. It was the very peacefulness of the situation which left her unsettled. Illogical, but nevertheless true.

She took a step, and stopped beside the bio-bed. Phlox had assured her that the captain's condition was evolving favourably. He was expected to wake up within the next 20 hours, all he needed was rest. There could be temporary impairment to his memory or thought processes, but he would suffer no permanent damage. Everything was well. This made her present state of mind all the more capricious.

She sighed, silently, lowered her head and timidly touched the captain's hand with her own. She had already learnt that physical contact was a way to diffuse the disturbing presence of emotion, even if the discovery hadn't been painless. His hand was warm and dry, pleasant to the touch. She felt with her fingertips the callousness of his, then with a slow caress followed his fingers to the palm and gently squeezed it.

She studied his face. His right side to her, the burning marks were almost invisible, and he looked simply asleep. She had never had the opportunity of studying his face quite this accurately before, and it gave her a strange sense of intimacy. She felt again a rush of emotion, a warm feeling creeping from her stomach to her breastbone, climbing up her oesophagus, and she tried to fight back the tears forming at the back of her throat. She felt defenceless.

And for once, alone in the narrow privacy of the curtained bed, at the presence of the captain's unconscious body, she felt she could let her control slip and gratefully surrendered herself to the flow of illogical mingled emotions and cried.


	6. Chapter 6 of 7

A/N I sincerely want to thank anyone who's been reading and especially those who reviewed (yes, for us poor ff writers it really means a lot :)) Here are the last two chapters of the story, hope you enjoy!

**

* * *

**

**Chapter 6**

**---**

_"There will the river whispering run  
Warm'd by thy eyes, more than the sun"  
(J. Donne)  
_

---

Someone was whispering his name.

"Jonathan."

He opened his eyes to the half light preceding dawn, to discover a woman crouching half a metre from his head, peering at him. He met her eyes and studied her face, her pale cheeks, high forehead and large mouth. She smiled.

"Listen," she invited, whispering again and raising her right hand. The gesture looked familiar. He could hear faint noises in the distance, sounding like barking dogs. "They're after you," she explained. "We must go." She got to her feet, and stood waiting for him. "Hurry!"

He rubbed his eyes, uncertain. Dreams and reality had started to mingle, to the point he had begun to doubt if he was ever awake at all. He didn't know the woman in front of him, nor could he say who she was, should someone ask him. But there wasn't anyone around to ask such a question, and something inside was urging him to follow her without any hesitation.

He got up, swayed a little on his feet, feeling light-headed. She was waiting, looking at him over her shoulder. As soon as he got to his feet she disappeared into the underbrush. He followed her into the wood.

---

The rain water he drank from a shallow, musky stone tasted unexpectedly sweet. He raised his eyes to his guide, who was intently looking at him.

She offered him an apple.

"Eat."

Her hazel eyes never left his. The apple was green and red, speckled with rust, and tasted sharp and sweet at the same time.

He wanted to ask a million things, but every question seemed to die before reaching his lips, lost in the all-important task of looking at her. He couldn't stop interrogating her golden eyes, silently. There was an aura of silence around her.

He had the strangest feeling that many words had ceased to exist, and only a few were left.

"They take pleasure in the hunt," she said.

She had led him in the woods, in spiral patterns repeating until he had completely lost any sense of the path they'd followed. She waited till he was done eating, then took his hand and pulled him to his feet, resuming the task of guiding him through the forest.

---

The branches were softly moving in the slight wind which touched the top of the trees. The sky was intensely azure, only a white fluffy cloud swiftly traversing it now and again, occasionally covering the sun. Jonathan Archer took in every particular, lying flat on his back, his face turned to the sky. He heard a light shuffle and pulled himself to a sitting position. His escort materialized at the edge of the narrow glade.

She smiled, the glowing warmth flowing from her eyes to his veins.

"We left them behind. We can rest a little."

She sat next to him, her arms circling her knees. He could see the beating of her pulse on her white throat. She turned to him, raised her hand and tenderly cupped the side of his face.

"Jonathan," she murmured.

He closed his eyes. The sound of her voice, the touch of her hand felt overwhelmingly right.

She was like water, and like grass. He touched her flowing chestnut hair, and hid his face in there. It smelled like a meadow, of earth and flowers. He embraced her, pushing her to the ground, burying his face in the hollow of her neck. It was like embracing a river, struggling with the stream, welcoming the cold of the water, letting it win. It was like embracing a field covered in gold wheat under the sun. It was like embracing night, and her eyes were bright stars.

He felt lost and found again, the world topsy-turvy and finally all right, the sun in the sky and his feet on the ground, and his soul singing above the whisper of her voice in his ear.

---

Her eyes looked like honey in the sunshine, with tiny brown flecks.

"Listen!" she whispered. He picked in the breeze the faint barking noise. "They're coming. They are very near, Jonathan!" Now her voice sounded urgent. "Are you ready?"

He was still lost in the enchantment of her gaze, feeling that no harm could ever exist in her presence.

"You are wrong, Jonathan!" she murmured, and lowered her eyes, breaking their connection. She swiftly got to her feet and looked downward at him. "It's you who must help me."

She turned away from him, stopped and looked at him above her shoulder. "Remember the stars, Jonathan." Her voice was a whisper, her eyes were pleading with him, her lips twitching. Then she turned away.

A swift silent motion, a rustle, and he was alone in the glade.

"Wait!" he cried out, jumping to his feet. He tried to follow her into the underbrush, feverishly, but she had simply disappeared. "Wait!" he called again, but the only answering sound was the barking of the dogs getting closer by the moment.

He was suddenly overcome by fear. The sweaty cold kind which twists your stomach and makes you want to run, but you know that there is no escape.

He wanted to crumple to the ground and cry. He could hear the fury in the baying and growling carried by the wind, he knew they would never relent and leave him alone, he knew that fiendish creature would chase him ruthlessly and enjoy himself immensely doing it.

But there was still something left to him. He squeezed his hands into fists, straightened his spine and clenched his jaw. His right hand touched briefly the patch on his uniform's left shoulder. He inhaled deeply, calming the churning sensation in his gut, and took a step ahead.

Suddenly, the bushes in front of him opened to let in a blur of brownish motion, accompanied by the sound of snapping twigs and whirlwind. He felt a heavy thump on his chest and fell behind, the dead leaves damping his dive. A sharp pain tore at his shoulder, the lithe warmth of an animal growling body over him. He tried to struggle. Other cutting sensations registered from his right arm and his left leg.

A snappish command resonated in the glade and all went quiet.

Archer lay on the ground, breathing heavily, tasting the pain in his body and the alarming feeling of warm blood dampening his uniform. The sky above was still azure, but the sun had gone. A booted foot scrunched the dead leaves just a breath away from his right ear. A shadow appeared above him, the white familiar skull and red eyes staring at him, that hateful smile on his lips.

"Jonathan, you stupid boy! Won't you ever learn, I wonder?"

Archer tried to get up, but the sharp pain in his shoulder stopped him. He tried again, clenching his teeth, and finally managed a sitting position. He stared at the creature, all his hate in his eyes. How would he like to just tighten his hands around his neck and choke him. The red eyes glowed.

"Don't worry, we'll have all the time in the world to resolve our differences, Jonathan." His voice had changed, had turned to a monotonous chant, and, while he spoke, the light of the day seemed to dry away. The air around them turned dull, grey, unnatural, then began to darken more and more. "I'm bringing you with me, Jonathan." The darkness of night was now surrounding them, curdling around them, until it seemed it had almost turned to a solid state. "In the darkness, we can be together forever."

The promise sounded like a ghost's whisper in the blackness of a night where no living body could exist.


	7. Chapter 7 of 7

**Chapter 7**

**---**

_"How and when and where and why  
stars and sun and moon and sky"  
(P. Gotlieb)_

_---_

He blinked his eyes open. Darkness. Complete absence of light. The algid, empty, silent blackness of space. He was floating around in space, his eyes open but unseeing.

"_There is nothing to see,_" he thought. "_So this is it. Darkness. Void. Emptiness. Death_."

He let the freezing blackness envelop him, powerless against the endlessness of space. He floated around lightly, boundless, he himself a tiny bit of the unforgiving, calm, icy expanse.

And then he felt something brush against his right arm. He moved his hand, and felt a cold edge under his touch. Solid. Metal, maybe.

He grabbed it and levered on it, gyrating his body. His right foot made contact with another solid surface, thumping dully. "_Sound. There's air in here…_"

Just as the thought traversed his mind, his eye caught a flicker of light from his left and he turned to see what it was.

Glittering stars were watching him, motionless, shaping in the darkness the silhouette of one of Enterprise's portholes. A faint memory flickered through his consciousness, the echo of a voice. "_Remember the stars…_" But his rational mind was struggling to put the pieces together and take in the situation.

He was not floating in space, he was aboard Enterprise.

But the absence of gravity, the darkness and the growing cold he could feel seeping to his bones told him something was terribly wrong.

"_There's air still,_" he thought, "b_ut the_ _life support must be off, or the temperature would be warmer…._" He felt panic settle in the pit of his stomach. He knew the air left would be exhausted very soon, or, otherwise, everyone on board would die from hypothermia, whichever came first.

"_Maybe it's possible to restore the atmosphere pumps… at least some of them._"

He had to get to the environmental systems. Now.

He began thrashing around, holding to the built-in furniture, trying to swim towards he didn't know what, unidentified objects bumping inordinately on him. Then he realized this wouldn't bring him anywhere. His ship and his crew were in danger. He breathed deeply, closed his eyes and focused himself, calling forth his inner strength. First of all, he needed to know where he was.

He began feeling for the floating objects surrounding him. A cold rectangular shape…. probably a PADD. A puzzling roundish object. He discarded it quickly, no time to lose. A mug. "_Maybe I'm in the mess hall. The furniture though doesn't seem right._" The pliant texture of paper. He grabbed it. Pages. A leather cover. A book! As far as he knew no-one else, beside him, had books on the ship. So this must be either his ready room or his quarters. He felt around, trying to locate the main pieces of furniture, hoping to God he'd find himself to be in his quarters. But soon, he had to acknowledge he was floating around in his ready room.

To reach Engineering he'd have to crawl down the vertical service tube to D-deck.

He renewed his efforts to reach the door, swearing under his breath.

---

The Bridge was even darker than his ready room, the powerless main screen a dead void of even the faint light of stars. But here he could at least grip the rail running around the central section and shove himself ahead.

He bumped twice against the unconscious body of a floating crew-member. The temptation was strong to stop and check on their condition, but he knew that, if they had a chance to be saved, he needed to reach engineering. It was a race against time.

"It's too late." A familiar voice resonated like a breath in his ear. The slight foreign accent made his skin goose bump on his arms. "You cannot do anything. They're dead already."

"They're not dead!" he cried into the darkness, rage shaking in his voice. "I can still save them!"

He doubled his efforts, his breath ragged in the thinning air.

"There's nothing you can do," the voice whispered sweetly. "Let it go…"

Jonathan didn't answer. He gritted his teeth and pushed harder against the handrail.

---

The sound of his ragged breath rebounded against the surface of the narrow tube, while the jumping light of the plasma torch made it vacillate around him. It was strange to glide in the darkness without an up or down, his limbs and body weightless.

He knew that time was running out, but a strange idea of being suspended in time, a sense of estrangement, was taking him.

"_I am no-where…_"

The thought was like a vertigo sweeping through him. But he shut it away, taking a strong hold of himself. He had a mission to accomplish. People depended on him. He couldn't stop to think now.

He had reached the junction to what would, under normal circumstances, be the horizontal tube leading to engineering. Only, now, there wasn't horizontal or vertical, only the way he had to follow, taking him deeper into darkness and silence.

The tube seemed to narrow around him, his breath became more laboured and his chest felt tight. He stopped a second, rubbing his face with his hands, inhaling deeply. The air was cold, thin, stale.

Another fleeting thought passed through him: it felt like a tomb. Dark, cold, narrow.

He chased it away, again. He took another deep breath and pushed himself ahead, gliding away into darkness.

---

The hatch to engineering had jammed and he had to use a spanner to force it open. He was exhausted, the air was getting unbreathable.

"_Time is running out. I must be quick!_"

He propelled himself to the environmental system control panel. He checked it out feverishly. The system had collapsed. He tried to restart the safety interlocks, praying they were not irretrievably damaged. There wouldn't be time for anything else.

He waited with bated breath, one, two seconds. Three.

Then he heard a thud coming from somewhere deep into the bowels of the ship and the whizzing sound of the pumps restarting. A kind of enormous breath passed through Enterprise, inflating her ribcage and lungs. Archer felt the familiar pull of gravity drawing him softly to the ground and emergency lights began to flicker around, heralding the return of life.

He crumpled to the floor, spent, heaving with painful gasps. He would have cried with relief, but, together with light and air, the blaring sound of alarms was invading the ship. His blood froze in his veins. He knew the sound only too well.

It was the sound no-one wanted ever to hear on a starship: the peculiar sound of the alarm signalling that a warp core breach had occurred.

---

He stood in front of the main reactor panel, trying his best to reverse the damage, but he knew very well it was a miracle which would not happen. The antimatter containment was lost and the only viable, although very likely useless, option, was trying a warp core ejection.

"I told you it was useless. They're dead already, you cannot do anything," the voice said once again at his ear. "Let it go."

Archer wheeled around, expecting the familiar red glare, but there was no-one in front of him.

"Stop it!" he challenged. "I will not give up. There's still hope!"

He turned back to the console, working quickly, starting the ejection procedure. The blaring of the alarm had now taken on a frantic quality. He knew, in the rational part of his mind, that there was no hope.

But, for some unknown reason, he could not let himself accept defeat.

There was something inside of him which would not give up. Something as hard as steel and as shapeless as water. Something warm and strong and easy. Life.

He felt light and heat surge through him, starting from a flickering sparkle in his chest, growing and radiating, reaching his stomach, his legs, his arms and spreading through each of his fingers, his head, expanding, enveloping him like sunlight.

The bodiless voice was now raging in his ear: "Fool! It's too late! They're dead! Can't you see it?"

But then, he couldn't hear it any longer. The white heat seared through him and the scorching light of a collapsing star invaded his very soul. He struggled not to fall, had to close his eyes, blinded, staggering.

He blinked twice, trying to see. Disoriented.

And when he finally succeeded in opening his eyes again, it was to the pure white light of Enterprise's sickbay.


End file.
